When Miles Sanders was carted into the locker room in the first half in Las Vegas with a towel over his head, it didn’t look good.
He feared the worst.
“I just thought my ankle was about to snap in half,” Sanders said this week. “I honestly thought it was worse (than it was). It ended up not being as bad.”
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Sanders, 24, left that Oct. 24 game in Vegas and missed the next three games on Injured Reserve. But at least his season wasn’t over. Sanders returned against New Orleans with 94 yards on the ground. He had 120 on the ground against the Jets before the bye.
While Sanders tweaked that ankle again in the Jets game, the bye week came at a perfect time for him to let it heal. He spent the week in Philly, getting treatment.
“Coming off the bye week, it’s feeling good,” Sanders said earlier this week. “Got to move around a little bit in the walkthrough so it feels pretty good and I’m confident about this week.”
Because of his lingering ankle injury, Sanders knows it’ll take a little extra work to make sure he’s ready to play out the rest of the schedule. He’s fine with that.
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During the week, it’ll just be about making sure he’s as healthy as possible for the upcoming game. With how much the Eagles have leaned on their rushing attack over the last six game, Sanders figures to be a big part of the game plan each week.
And if the Eagles are able to make a playoff push over these last four games, they’ll need a relatively healthy Sanders.
“Super fired up. We all know what’s at stake,” Sanders said. “It’s going to go back to us not getting too excited. Just taking it one day at a time, being where your feet are. We got a long week off watching football. We are all excited to be back. Just knowing what we can do is very exciting. We’re just going to focus on one day at a time to get to that goal.”
Back in 2019, when the Eagles won their last four games to win the division, Sanders was just a rookie. He was a young pup in the NFL world but those four games taught him a lot about high-pressure situations and what it’s like to perform in a playoff atmosphere.
Having come out of that with a playoff berth, he also knows the feeling of accomplishing that goal. Sanders is looking forward to having that opportunity again.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “It’s real exciting knowing that these fans are going to go crazy if we get it done.”